Sin

Church of the Missing Words

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One of the truths that has struck me in recent years, and one not every Christian is willing to consider, is that nearly every tribe, tongue, and nation has some concept of sin. Those tribes, tongues, and nations may view sin in a way that does not conform to orthodox Christian theology, but the acknowledgment that you/me/us has somehow done something wrong to anger “the gods” remains.

Where the divide comes is how you/me/us deals with that sin, and this makes for the most obvious differences between Christians and everyone else. In nearly all religions, some element of works righteousness exists, and while none should in Christianity, I’d say the majority of the world’s Christians are still trying to earn their way out of their sin or the consequences of it.

But that huge topic is another post.

This morning, I read the Outreach Magazine newsletter and an article in it, “5 Things Jesus Says to the Gay Community.” I’d like to say that I resisted considering what that article would NOT say, but I am weak and came to it expecting not to see a few Things Jesus Says even if He did, in reality, say them.

I wish I could say the article surprised me. I wish I could say that.

If anyone questions our status in the Last Days before the return of Christ, it is enough to know that while ancient pagans who participated in all manner of perverse activity still maintained some concept of personal sin, we don’t seem to have any concept of this today. Sin seems to be relegated to the other guy OR to political parties OR to groups with bad public relations departments OR to jerks who can’t manage their carbon offsets properly.

Reading “5 Things Jesus Says to the Gay Community,” one does not get the sense that at any time Jesus wants to say “stop sinning” or “repent, or you will all likewise perish.” Those statements of His are in the Bible, though. While it’s true they are not aimed at any one sin, the fact is that they are aimed at everyone and they cover every sin is what should make them an obvious addition to anything Jesus says.

Gagged and silencedThe problem for the Church today is that some elements within it seek to silence those words that accompany those concepts that make people uncomfortable. Or those same folks dance around truth like it’s a primed hand grenade, hoping that some other poor schmuck will take the risk to stick the pin back in. This is happening because we have become purposefully dishonest about Mankind’s status before God. We find it impossible to say without caveats, “Actually, I am a bad human being,” and have that badness mirror what God says is bad rather than what Man says is bad (“You wore white after Labor Day? For shame!”) Even the ancients knew that something was grossly wrong within them, yet in declaring ourselves immune to such gross wrongness today, we see the language associated with that wrong decay and go missing. In the end, we find we can’t express truth in any way that makes life uncomfortable for anyone, and every Gospel appeal sounds like little else than salve for bruised egos.

When the Church can’t bring itself to state the obvious, then it has lost whatever force God has endowed it with. And Jesus had something to say about that:

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”
—Matthew 5:13 ESV

Sins of the Fathers (and Mothers)

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‘The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’
—Numbers 14:18 ESV

Despite the fact that the vast majority of scientific discoveries that undergird our modern life were made by Christians and that science in Europe outstripped science in the East and Middle East because Christian Europeans believed God is knowable and His Creation understandable, atheists continue to overlook facts and claim Christians are anti-science. They claim that believing the Bible is tantamount to disbelieving science, and they like to insist the Bible, when it talks about science, is “underinformed.”

Lately, I’ve been fascinated with the science of epigenetics, and I am because of the Bible verse that begins this post.

Epigenetics explains some of the presence of supposed “junk” in the human genome and why we can’t trace every genetic outcome to genes alone. While standard genetic theory could account for the sameness of identical twins, even down to shared behaviors, it could not account for the differences. Enter epigenetics.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

When Darwinism hit Victorian sensibilities like a sledgehammer, it also pounded the life out the widely accepted theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarckism postulates that a generation could make choices and changes it could then pass on to progeny.  While Lamarck did not originate the idea, he nonetheless championed it and expanded on its principles so well that it gained his name.

Like many Enlightenment scientists in France, Lamarck was not a supporter of Christianity. That said, he continued to believe that chance did not run the cosmos, adhering to the ordered, planned, and meaningful universe concept likewise expressed by Christians.

Today, the field of epigenetics is so hot, it borders on incendiary. It turns out there may be more to the idea of being “born that way,” no matter what type of deviance or godliness “that way” might be.

Epigenetics demonstrates that a good or bad genetic expression may not express unless turned on. Remarkably (or should I write Lamarckably), an organism may have the genetic predilection toward a bad outcome yet that bad outcome never arises. Conversely, it may if switched on by the environment, nurture, or personal choices. The genetic disease possessed by twins may be expressed solely by the twin who decides to eat certain types of food; the gene combo for the disease literally switches on due to epigenetics. And this can also be passed to progeny.

Which is where sins of the fathers kick in. Epigenetics is showing that repeated bad choices by a parent can lead to a tendency in the offspring to manifest the same bad behavior. Lamarck rears his head yet again.

So, the visitation of the iniquities of the fathers (and mothers) to the third and fourth generation has a possible epigenetic link. Some epigeneticists are able to break down certain sinful behaviors into father-spawned or mother-spawned. Contrariwise, a godly parent may pass on a positive epigenetic tendency toward his or her offspring’s faith in God.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made, yet we are also damaged by the Fall of Man. That damage goes deep, even to our genetics, which we are now learning may bend us toward wrongful behavior because of what our moms and dads did. Or in those cases when we overcome, toward faithful living.

Looks like a case of science proving the Bible.

Too Much Grace?

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One of my projects for the summer was to read the New Testament out loud with my son. We finished a couple days after summer ended.

I’ve read through the entire Bible a few times, and through the New Testament more times than I can remember. But I had not read straight through the New Testament in perhaps five years. That was certainly too long, but we have a tendency in the Church to break down everything into acceptable chunks rather than dealing with larger wholes, so I suspect my failing is more common than not.

This time through the NT, one theme kept hitting me in the face. John sums it up:

Everyone who has been born of God does not commit sin, because His seed remains in him, and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.
—1 John 3:9 MKJV

Whiter than snowWe Protestants love to talk about grace. At one point, we loved to talk about holiness too. Today, we don’t talk much about that second one at all.

What struck me hard in my read-through of the NT this time was that every writer of every book warned the Church about sin. Believers were commanded not to sin. Believers were warned of the consequences of sin. The writers were pretty darned serious that Christian faith and sin cannot coexist. The Book of Revelation holds nothing back regarding what happens to those who sin and those who do not.

The Bible makes it clear that we believers are commanded not to sin. We are also commanded on the flip side: to be righteous. If this is a command, then it must be something we have some control over.  If we are told, “Don’t do that!” or “This you must do!” then some means exists for us to take action or else the command is pointless.

Some might argue that these commands sound too much like New Testament Law. Maybe. But they are there in the pages of the NT nonetheless.

I see Christians today excusing all manner of bad behavior under the blanket of grace. We seem to have room for all manner of grace for all manner of sin. I’m not sure we have the same room for holiness though.

When Jesus says that calling your brother a fool is murder, and the Bible says God won’t let murderers inherit His kingdom, do we take that seriously? Do I even have to ask that question? Because the answer today seems to be that we don’t. At all. Or else we believers would look more distinct from the unrighteous hordes who have chosen the wide, sin-strewn way that leads to destruction.